Breaking the Rules

I have, of late, discovered One Stop Poetry. I am new to it, so I do not know the frequency of the posts, but there are regular challenges for poets. Today, there was a short, entirely effective exposition on the ballad form.

Here is the breakdown, taken from the site:

Quick overview of Ballads: A Ballad is a quatrain with a 8,6,8,6 syllable pattern. The rhyme scheme is abcb – meaning the second and forth lines rhyme.

The example of a classic ballad given on the website was "House of the Rising Sun," using the version made famous by The Animals

Here is my irreverent example:

Once, upon another time
Sing songy baby talk
Was able to amuse me much
But now ticks like a clock

I really must reject this form
It has become cliché
And were it not for the iams
I'd have nothing to say

In my post title, I suggested that I was doing some rule breaking because I have not observed a strict syllable count, so to the foregoing "rules" one must add the concept of metrical weight and syllable duration. In other words, when a syllable is sounded long, it counts as two (or more) syllables.

It ends up sounding more natural, and, in fact, is what keeps the form from becoming, despite my flippant observations, too cliché. In the above example, there is a pause after "once," indicated by a comma; "another" is sounded like "ano…ther;" the "the" before the "iams" is lingered on, building tension for the punch line, which has another stretched syllable in no…thing. I should also say the the italicized "ticks" is meant to be said with a silly up pitch.

If you listen to the greats (Dylan, Guthrie, Lennon, et.al.) You almost never hear them using the rules strictly. There is almost always that stretching (and compressing) of syllables.

So to those rules, I say, "Sound it out. If it feels right—it is right."

Also, I bet the author of the post is quite aware of all this. So don't think me a know it all for pointing this out. Please. In fact, to the author, Thank you. Well explained.